#10 - Large marge, Mounting Your Tires

With the introduction of our massive Large Marge rim, we have some helpful hints for easy tire installation and removal. What? You’ve installed thousands of tires and don’t think you need to read the instructions? Fine, go for it. That’s what I said the first time. Seriously, it’s a really simple thing that will save those swear words for something better.

INSTALLATION OF TIRE:
Hopefully, you used our fancy wide ass rim strip and applied it to a clean rim before installing the tire. We’ve found the smallest tires we liked were in the 2.25-2.3” range. Anything smaller won’t have much float, and the tire doesn’t bulge out past the sidewalls of the rim when inflated. You’re likely to hit rocks straight onto the rim if you don’t have large enough tires.

Now, mount the rubber onto the Large Marge as you would any other tire. Inflate the tube slowly and watch as the bead creaps outwards towards the sidewall. It’s kind of spooky to hear and feel this, but you need to fully inflate the tube to make sure the tire bead is fully seated in the lip of the rim. You may have to overinflate the tire to seat it, then let some air out to your desired riding pressure.

REMOVAL OF TIRE:
Check out the cross section of this rim. Notice the deep valley in the middle? If you push the bead(s) of the tire into this valley, it will loosen up the bead around the rim and provide enough room to get your plastic tire lever in there to pry it off. If you’re breaking tire levers, bloodying up your knuckles and cussing like a trucker, you’re likely not keeping the bead in the valley during removal.